Sue Blackmore vs Graham Nichols Interview.

Sue Blackmore vs Graham Nichols 

https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Sh...m-Nicholls

Well worth a listen. What she does here again is slip out of dealing properly with the data by suggesting it's not reliable or
it didn't really (actually) happen the way the cases were presented. Nicholls deals with her nicely while exposing her assumptions as simply wrong (such as her citing of Blanke's epileptic patient's out of body experience as comparable with those in NDE)

From her new book, she incorrectly reports the denture case (even though it is meticulously documented by Smit and Rivas on the net) and then finally makes it clear that even if something remarkable were happening (like a separate mind) there's nothing useful that can be done with it ("and then what" ..."and then what") because there's no mechanism. She wants to test the theory and make predictions about it by finding out what the soul is made of and measure it !

But when she wonders how this might be done, she's smart enough to realise that it's all silly nonsense. You can't measure the soul (fairy dust) so it must be dropped as a concept. And it all sounds very reasonable except she forgot to mention that she has previously said that she will accept any hits Parnia get's, if he does his experiments right. If that's the case, why call the outcome before the experiments have been properly put to the test ?


Of course it is inexplicable if it were true as
told – but is it? That is the question no one can
answer for sure and, like the Maria and Pam
Reynolds' cases, this one has been amply debated
(Craffert, 2015, French, 2005, Smit, 2008,
Woerlee, 2010, Smit & Rivas, 2010). What was his
brain state during resuscitation, both in the
ambulance and in hospital? Could this hypothermia
have contributed to preserving brain activity?
Exactly when were the dentures removed? What did
the crash cart really look like and how close was
his description? Could he have heard the nurse's
apparently distinctive husky voice during the
resuscitation and recognised him that way? So
long after the events consensus on any of these questions is impossible.

What are we to conclude about 'Dentures man'?
Rudolf Smit (2008) tried to 'set the record
straight' and provided the most thorough account
of the story so far. Smit is no avowed sceptic
but an NDE researcher and co-author of The Self
Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from
Near-Death Experiences (Rivas et al, 2016). Yet
he concluded , 'this case cannot constitute
definitive proof of continuation of
consciousness, let alone survival of death. But
it does provide corroborating testimony that
something extraordinary happened at the time, an
event that should not be dismissed out of hand as
a ridiculous story made up by naïve believers' (Smit, 2008, p. 61).

There are two interesting things about this
conclusion. The first is that even this case, so
often trumpeted as evidence for consciousness
beyond the brain, and used by van Lommel for that
purpose, does not stand up to careful scrutiny.
The second is that it reveals, even as late as
2008, that people still tend to think in terms of
just two opposing possibilities – that either the
story is true as told and is therefore amazing
evidence for souls, life after death or
consciousness without the brain, or is made up.

The most likely truth in this as in so many other
famous cases is neither of these. It is that
'Dentures man' really did have an out-of-body
experience, really did seem to see the room from
up near the ceiling and described it as
faithfully as he could but this, like every other
OBE we know about, was caused by the state of his
body and brain; not by his spirit leaving his
body. Yes, it was 'something extraordinary' and
no, it wasn't 'made up by naïve believers' but nor is it evidence for the soul.

Op blz. 296/297 (Chapter 17 – Back to That Night
in November) she says about her neurological
findings which, according to her offer an
explanation for NDE's and OBE's the following:

“These discoveries are a joy to me but quite the
opposite to others. […] It encourages me to keep
learning, keep meditating, and keep trying new
techniques and drugs. […] the more you learn the
more you realise how much you still don't know.

This is what so rarely happens in NDE research.
Again and again the arguments come back to
whether someone actually saw something they
should not have been able to see, or consciously
saw anything at all when their brain was silent.
And then what? Then, you might believe from
reading Morse, Parnia, Fenwick, Rivas or van
Lommel, we have 'proof' that the scientists are
all wrong, that materialist, reductionist (and
heartless and anti-spiritual?) Western scientific
paradigm must be overthrown. And then?

Then nothing. The 'new paradigm' and the 'visions
of a new science of consciousness' (Parnia &
Fenwick, 2002) are empty. We are told that a few
special cases prove the reality of the human soul
and its survival of bodily death, that memory is
stored outside of the brain and consciousness
does not depend on having a body. And then?

What do these new 'theories' predict? If I take
them seriously, I want to ask questions such as,
'What is the soul made of'. 'What capabilities
does it have and not have? And how can we find
out?', 'If memory is stored outside the brain,
how is it stored, and what does this tell us
about learning, forgetting, or retrieving old
memories?', 'What is consciousness and what is
left of it when the eyes and ears, visual and
auditory cortices, vestibular system and self-systems are all dead?'

And I get no answers. It is not that the research
has yet to be done, it is that these theories
don't tell us what research needs to be done.

They provide no predictions, no interesting
questions that can be answered with experiments,
and no ways of finding out which of them fits the
data better. Like the theory of astral projection, they are empty.”

Well worth a listen. What she does here again is slip out of dealing properly with the data by suggesting it's not reliable or
it didn't really (actually) happen the way the cases were presented. 

Although I disagree with Susan, I like her approach she seems to be open to the possibility of these things and seems to be truly interested in the truth and not espousing her personal belief.

It's interesting that there are two primary reasons that she thinks OBEs aren't "real".
1- Her OBE seemed to show major differences between the OBE world and our own. This being the case, she says it is a fabrication. I think this is true, just not in the way she thinks. For example, she would have OBEers try to read numbers off a card and they are always wrong. This to her invalidates the OBE. More on this in a minute.

2- OBEs don't replicate well. Every time she has looked closely at an example, she has been unable to duplicate it. Or if she did, the physical and OBE world, again seemed different, which to her signals an invalid case. 

Yes, OBEs are hard to do, and most can't do them on demand. There are lots of things in the world that can't be done on demand that are obviously real things, so I will leave this counter claim aside.

Now to the principal issue with Sue and many others. The fact that people don’t see to be able to reliably gain visual information during their OBE.

First: you can read a piece on this at multidimentional man website. 
http://www.multidimensionalman.com/Multi...ravel.html

Second: I’d like to explain my view of how this works, which predicts just this sort of thing.

I believe that our physical world and everything in it is created by a facility we all have. Perhaps it is a part of consciousness, perhaps not. It is the same facility that creates the seemingly real environments of our dreams and lucid dreams. We know that we MUST have a facility like this as we experience it every night.

In the case of our dreams, this world is subjective to us. However, in our real world experience the data upon which we create our experience is common to everything and everyone in our reality. It is THE one set of objective data upon which we all draw. 

It is this facility that allows me to see my dead grandmother in the corner as I lie on my deathbed, while you see only the empty corner. My facility and yours both access the same objective data, but my facility also combines other, perhaps ethereal data, that is available only to me, and it can be manifested at least ethereally in my version of reality,, but not yours.

The level of reality closest to the 3D that we see every day (let’s call it the astral) is also a construction by us, but it may be that we are more prone to intermix the subjective and objective data. 

This is what Jurgen Z. (Multidimensional Man author) seems to be describing in his essay, and is something he has witnessed many times.

For example: he did a test where he asked his brother to leave a sticky note on his wall as a device to test Jurgen in an OEB. Turns out when Jurgen went to his brother’s house during and OBE he saw a large number of sticky notes on the wall. And one that he read talked about an appointment to get his car fixed.

Turns out there was only one note on the wall and it was not about getting a car fixed. So failure? Only Jurgen’s imagination?

Not so fast. It turns out that the brother did have an appointment to get his car fixed, and the info matched the note. Hmm.

In another test Jurgen found that his bedroom had an extra window and a different rug.

Jurgen theorizes that what you are seeing in the astral is a version similar to the physical but which includes ideas and thoughts that you have as well. Perhaps that new color rug you want, or that extra window you are planning? Essentially he is saying that we are mixing more of our subjective selves into the scene. 

If my theory is correct, the machinery of how we construct our version of reality is simply getting more non-physical data mixed into the constructed reality. In Jurgen’s brother’s case, he is even reaching into his brother’s subjective data as well.

So when Susan saw a white gutter rather than a copper one, she shouldn't be seeing this as a failure of the OBE but rather she needs to understand that the OBE is accessing a world that IS NOT physical reality, but rather a similar one.

Listening right now, finding Sue Blackmore very frustrating so far. She's a charming lady and comes across very well, but is saying things that are misleading or not true. She just said if OBE's were real, then most science would have to be overthrown! Very scary sounding, but not true.

Listening right now, finding Sue Blackmore very frustrating so far. She's a charming lady and comes across very well, but is saying things that are misleading or not true. She just said if OBE's were real, then most science would have to be overthrown! Very scary sounding, but not true.

Yes of course, science is overthrown by discovering there is more to the universe than we thought. Sheesh ?

Listening right now, finding Sue Blackmore very frustrating so far. She's a charming lady and comes across very well, but is saying things that are misleading or not true. She just said if OBE's were real, then most science would have to be overthrown! Very scary sounding, but not true.

She might be fun at a party, or interesting to chat to, seriously wouldn't mind that. But as a serious researcher, she's so out of date that it's laughable. It's like bringing a Ford Escort to a 2017 car show and showing it as a competitor to Tesla's and other modern cars. 

Still listening, again Sue comes across well and is very pleasant, but again saying false things, now about the state of Parapsychology research, I've read the papers and she is simply saying false things. I think Graham did well to stay as calm as he did, and I would have challenged her more forcefully had I been there. An example is Sue claiming that when Parapsychologists tighten their research the effect goes away (no it doesn't) and that psi research isn't replicable (read Maaneli's Ganzfeld paper the Ganzfeld research itself matches and beats several classes of mainstream research in terms of replicability). Additionally using selected subjects has produced much higher effect sizes (we're talking hit rates in the Ganz approaching 50%, highly significant).

Very light and breezy, seemingly very reasonable, but when it comes down to it, she leans very heavily on a PhD that was gained years ago, and is unmovable in her views. That's my impression.

Did anyone else think that the (Christian) interviewer was too accommodating and agreed a little too quickly with Susan? I had the feeling that Graham would have felt a bit like this was two against one at times.

Very light and breezy, seemingly very reasonable, but when it comes down to it, she leans very heavily on a PhD that was gained years ago, and is unmovable in her views. That's my impression.

I seem to recall reading somewhere sometime ago that someone (apologies for the vagueness but she isn't someone I'm particularly interested in) else examined the results she gathered and which she cited in her own thesis and found evidence of an effect.

She seems to have made a career based on a piece of research didn't establish anything (to her) and in fact, perhaps based on data that proved the opposite. Great work if you can get it.

Although I disagree with Susan, I like her approach she seems to be open to the possibility of these things and seems to be truly interested in the truth and not espousing her personal belief.

It's interesting that there are two primary reasons that she thinks OBEs aren't "real".
1- Her OBE seemed to show major differences between the OBE world and our own. This being the case, she says it is a fabrication. I think this is true, just not in the way she thinks. For example, she would have OBEers try to read numbers off a card and they are always wrong. This to her invalidates the OBE. More on this in a minute.

2- OBEs don't replicate well. Every time she has looked closely at an example, she has been unable to duplicate it. Or if she did, the physical and OBE world, again seemed different, which to her signals an invalid case. 

Yes, OBEs are hard to do, and most can't do them on demand. There are lots of things in the world that can't be done on demand that are obviously real things, so I will leave this counter claim aside.

Now to the principal issue with Sue and many others. The fact that people don’t see to be able to reliably gain visual information during their OBE.

First: you can read a piece on this at multidimentional man website. 
http://www.multidimensionalman.com/Multi...ravel.html

Second: I’d like to explain my view of how this works, which predicts just this sort of thing.

I believe that our physical world and everything in it is created by a facility we all have. Perhaps it is a part of consciousness, perhaps not. It is the same facility that creates the seemingly real environments of our dreams and lucid dreams. We know that we MUST have a facility like this as we experience it every night.

In the case of our dreams, this world is subjective to us. However, in our real world experience the data upon which we create our experience is common to everything and everyone in our reality. It is THE one set of objective data upon which we all draw. 

It is this facility that allows me to see my dead grandmother in the corner as I lie on my deathbed, while you see only the empty corner. My facility and yours both access the same objective data, but my facility also combines other, perhaps ethereal data, that is available only to me, and it can be manifested at least ethereally in my version of reality,, but not yours.

The level of reality closest to the 3D that we see every day (let’s call it the astral) is also a construction by us, but it may be that we are more prone to intermix the subjective and objective data. 

This is what Jurgen Z. (Multidimensional Man author) seems to be describing in his essay, and is something he has witnessed many times.

For example: he did a test where he asked his brother to leave a sticky note on his wall as a device to test Jurgen in an OEB. Turns out when Jurgen went to his brother’s house during and OBE he saw a large number of sticky notes on the wall. And one that he read talked about an appointment to get his car fixed.

Turns out there was only one note on the wall and it was not about getting a car fixed. So failure? Only Jurgen’s imagination?

Not so fast. It turns out that the brother did have an appointment to get his car fixed, and the info matched the note. Hmm.

In another test Jurgen found that his bedroom had an extra window and a different rug.

Jurgen theorizes that what you are seeing in the astral is a version similar to the physical but which includes ideas and thoughts that you have as well. Perhaps that new color rug you want, or that extra window you are planning? Essentially he is saying that we are mixing more of our subjective selves into the scene. 

If my theory is correct, the machinery of how we construct our version of reality is simply getting more non-physical data mixed into the constructed reality. In Jurgen’s brother’s case, he is even reaching into his brother’s subjective data as well.

So when Susan saw a white gutter rather than a copper one, she shouldn't be seeing this as a failure of the OBE but rather she needs to understand that the OBE is accessing a world that IS NOT physical reality, but rather a similar one.

"Although I disagree with Susan, I like her approach she seems to be open to the possibility of these things and seems to be truly interested in the truth and not espousing her personal belief."

Hi, Jkmac. Susan is all over the internet gleefully recounting how initially impressed she was with her OBE and how real it seemed at the time and she "really believed" that she'd been out of her body and this was going to upturn science etc etc, before informing us that when she actually checked it out (the cast iron gutters she saw were in fact plastic) she realised that it was all a fantasy !

If you just follow this through with simple logic, it's glaringly obvious it's just complete bullsh@t unfortunately (sorry Susan)

When did she change her mind about the authenticity of her experience ? Clearly when she went outside to check if what she'd "seen" matched up with what was actually there. So when would that be ? Six years later ? Six months, six weeks  ? Six hours later ? Probably the latter, six hours.

So how could she possibly believe for quite a long time, (she means a substantial period of time ) that she'd had a genuine OBE when she obviously (as the good scientist she purports to be) would have checked it out straight away and seen that what she saw was wrong !

Seventeen years ago, she said this :

"Come to think of it, I feel slightly sad. It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that"

Sorry but it's just not a believable story.

https://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journal...e-unknown/

 https://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/drugs/a...xperience/